Tag Archives: fashion
Still not used to her new glasses, she reached behind the lenses and rubbed an eye. “Why did you make me get these?” she asked. “I can see fine.”
She kept the windows open even in the winter, and a sharp frozen breeze blew in. I retrieved her favorite cashmere throw and draped it over her shoulders. “Thanks,” she said with surprising sweetness. She extended her hand as I walked back to the kitchen, grazing my arm. It was the first time in three weeks she had touched me.
I asked her how many eggs she wanted and she said two.
Her touch, though faint, stayed on my skin. As chilly as it was inside, I felt myself growing warm and the kitchen seemed stuffy. An eerie quiet settled in and I could hear her measured breath.
“Are you okay, K?” she asked from the kitchen table where she was reading a fashion magazine.
Without warning, I toppled to the floor. I heard her scream with an unfamiliar urgency as she rushed to my side. Her hair was messy and the lenses of her new glasses were fogged up. I closed my eyes, stung by the life in her breath.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, cold, death, December, eggs, fashion, fiction, flash fiction, glasses, love, magazine, reading, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, winter, women | posted in Me, Uncategorized
I was walking home that night, paying little attention to my surroundings, when a woman – slight, fashionably dressed, dark eyes – approached me.
“Are you K?”
I said that I was, trying to ignore the incredulity of the moment. It was dark, but I knew her voice.
She looked at me, then punched me in the face, sending me backward. Her punch had knocked her off balance, so the force of the blow was relatively tame. Still, my right eye began to swell.
“Stay the fuck away from me!” she shouted.
Too stunned to reply, I grimaced at her. She took a knife from her back pocket. “And give me your fucking watch.”
I did. Then she flipped me off before tottering off into the shadows.
In a daze, I tripped and had to limp home in the dark.
I woke the next morning on the couch, and you were sitting next to me. “Sorry,” you said with resignation, handing me my watch. “I’ve always kind of liked it, I guess. We met the day you bought it.”
You were leaving for work.
“At least you didn’t try to run me over this time,” I said, watching the front door close.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, assault, couch, fashion, fiction, flash fiction, love, punch, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, time piece, violence, watch | posted in Me, Woman
“Why are you here,” I asked in an accusatory tone.
“I loved him,” she moaned, extending a finger toward the coffin. She had dirt under her fingernail. “We were going to marry next August.”
“See that brunette in front? That’s his wife. So, why are you here?” I was calm.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes were red. She grabbed the lapels of her miniskirtsuit and pulled them tightly to her chest. “Do I have to leave?”
“Well, no. But you’ve been at every funeral for the past month. So I’m curious.” The authority with which I spoke prevented her from realizing that I was guilty of the same.
“I just prefer the dead.” She glared at me.
I was overcome with passion.
“So do I,” I gasped, grasping her hand. It was like ice. She recoiled but I refused to let go. “It’s okay. I understand.” She was obviously dead and found comfort in those like her. I, however, was just a deviant with a fetish for dead bodies. “Give me a chance,” I implored. “I won’t let you down.”
I took the flower she had tucked behind her ear (symbolizing life, perhaps) and sank its stem into my neck.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, coffin, death, fashion, flash fiction, flower, funeral, love, relationships, Short Fiction, suit | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
As she choked me, I wondered if she had murdered anyone before. Her grip was confident. She showed no concern that she might take things too far–as though she knew the right moment to stop.
Had she not been so attractive, I may not have followed her home that night–out of curiosity, I assure you. She may not have approached me: “Why are you following me?” She may not have invited me to her home to debase and fuck me. But the intensity of her presence was hypnotic. I was truly under her spell.
Get the fuck out of here. I was used to the way she spoke to me. It chilled me but kept me alive. I balled up my clothes and headed toward the door. Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflection of her glass liquor cabinet, I rubbed at the red striations on my throat. Anybody would be able to guess what happened.
Use that. She nodded to a purple Armani draped across the sofa.
“Madam, have you ever killed anyone?”
All the men who come here. And with that scarf, in fact. Now, come here and let me tie it for you before you go.
1 Comment | tags: affect, Armani, death, fashion, flash fiction, masochism, relationships, sadomasochism, sex, Short Fiction, short story | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction, Woman
I stole my neighbor’s luxury hatbox.
Repair men were in her apartment replacing the floor. They left the door open and when I walked past I saw the hatbox resting on an ugly sofa.
I walked past again. And again. The repair men were probably taking a break. I ran in and snatched the hatbox. After reaching my apartment, I took in my new acquisition. I didn’t know why I decided to steal her hatbox. Perhaps I wanted to sell it. Perhaps I just wanted something nice.
I inhaled and opened it, not really expecting to find anything inside. (Who keeps a hat in a hatbox?)
There was a note inside–something scribbled on the back of a receipt in an oval, feminine hand. It was the beginning of a love letter to me. “Dear K,” it began. She had written nice things about me, but entirely in past tense as though I were dead: “You were this, you were that.”
I had the sudden urge to return the hatbox. Then I turned her love letter over and inspected the receipt.
Rope, tape, saw, shovel, bleach, trash bags.
I decided not to return the hatbox after all. I locked the door.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, death, fashion, flash fiction, hat, letter, love, murder, neighbor, relationships, Short Fiction, short story, sofa, theft | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
She let her jeans slide down, muttering something about a Japanese myth: the pieces should fit together like a puzzle, or something.
That’s not how the myth goes, but I got the gist.
I pushed her to the bed and yanked my belt off. The buckle (an ostentatious L and V fused together like ugly conjoined twins) crashed to the floor with a thud. I disrobed the rest of her with a practiced hand.
(After fucking my fiftieth girl, I threw myself a party at a bar. Balloons and everything–HAPPY FITYITH. Bystanders congratulated me even though I “look[ed] no older than 30.”)
I dramatically pried apart her legs as though she were resisting. Then I stopped.
“What’s wrong,” she cooed, playing her role.
“I’m sorry, ” I said. “What do you want me to do with this?” I was staring at an angular opening, like the corner of a jigsaw puzzle. She recoiled on cue. “Asshole! I told you: like a puzzle piece.”
I pulled my pants up and fetched my expensive belt. “I thought you were misquoting,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Could it be, I’m not as smart as I think I am,” I wondered on my way out.
Leave a comment | tags: fashion, Japan, myth, puzzle, relationship, sex | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“Be careful with these,” I instructed, handing the shoe cobbler a very expensive and badly scarred pair of high heels.
……….
I lit them on fire last week, after our most recent fight, but came to my senses before the damage turned irreparable. Dousing the shoes in water, I put them with her other shoes.
I fished them out, carved the letter K into the sole of the left shoe. Then I put them back again, pleased.
“Let’s go out,” she said later, apparently ready to be a loving couple again. “Somewhere fancy. I’ll wear my Louboutins.”
“Wait,” I said, steeling myself for something awful…
……….
“Call me when they’re fixed,” she texted later, having left angrily.
……….
The shoe cobbler was young. She was too pretty, her nails too long and skirt too short to be someone who toiled over footwear all day. But whatever. I handed her the shoes.
……….
That night the shoe cobbler came to my door wearing only the Louboutins. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting,” she said in a voice that belonged to someone else. She moved to take the shoes off, as is customary in my house. I grabbed her hand: “You’d probably better not.”
Leave a comment | tags: affect, destruction, fashion, fire, Louboutin, relationships, sex, shoes | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
I spoke in a paranoid manner, like someone dealing coke on a playground.
“She always wears the same pants–high-waisted, the color of mustard,” I explained.
K furrowed his forehead. “So what?”
He didn’t get it. She and I had been out six times, and while she was attractive, her sartorial choices revolved around that high-waisted, mustard-colored pair of pants.
K continued after an uncomfortable pause: “When are you seeing her next?”
“Tonight. She’s coming over for dinner.”
……….
I made her pasta and got her drunk. We groped at each other–unhooking, unzipping.
I reached for the button on her pants.
“Wait,” she gasped, clutching my hand, “we should stop.”
……….
“I’m ready” read the email. Twenty years had passed. But I knew what it meant.
She still lived at the same place. She seemed too old–a disease, she would explain later in the bedroom. She still had on the same pants. They were faded and badly worn in the knees.
“Fuck me,” she hissed. I grabbed her by the waist and yanked her pants to the ground. Her torso toppled from her hips with a thud. “Thank you,” she said before dying.
“For what,” I wondered. I hadn’t fucked her yet.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, body, clothes, dating, death, disease, fashion, mustard, pants, pasta, relationships, sex, wine | posted in Her, Me, Short Fiction
“Seeking new husband. Must meet the following criteria:…”
K wanted to apply for the position. But he knew he wouldn’t make the cut. While he had loved her for years, he was not as robust or as rich as the new man he needed to be.
One morning K, her neighbor and life-long “friend,” watched as a line of men began materializing in front of her house. Soon the line of men stretched the length of the street.
At 2 pm, she opened her front door. For the next 10 hours, men entered the house, men left the house. By 1 AM the line had dwindled. Having nothing to lose, K got in line—the last candidate.
“K, what are you doing? You know you can’t apply. Plus, [Redacted] wore J Crew exclusively.”
K frowned. He marched into the bedroom and examined the deceased’s wardrobe.
“The new one has to wear J Crew too.” She was behind him.
“Was that in your ad?”
“Toward the bottom.”
“ I hate J Crew.”
“I know.”
K put his hand to her cheek and she pressed back into it. Then he left, but not before stealing a pair of the deceased’s J Crew socks—which he kinda liked.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, clothes, death, fashion, flash fiction, friendship, husband, interview, J. Crew, love, marriage, relationships, socks, stealing, wife | posted in Man, Short Fiction, Woman
He had heard that in order to become a master perfumist you absolutely needed an advanced degree in chemistry. You absolutely needed to know how chemicals react with other chemicals, and stuff.
The secret to his masterful bottles of perfume (which retailed for $200 per bottle) was not in his knowledge of chemistry (he was actually quite inept in the sciences during college, demonstrating instead an unfortunate fondness for literature) but in the words of women who hated him.
……….
I fucking hate your guts, K. She said in a surprisingly even tone, leaving the door ajar as she left. Before her words fell to the floor and broke into sharp shards, he hurriedly bottled them. He stored the bottle among other bottles of spite and venom, spat by a variety of women over the past year, knowing that his next great scent was only another heartbreak or two away.
Two months later, amidst great praise and acclaim, he released his new perfume. Then he went home to break up with his girlfriend. His career, it seems, depended on it.
She was unfortunately very understanding about everything. So when she left, he let her words fall to the ground.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, fashion, perfume, relationships, scent, smell | posted in Her, Him, Man, Woman
At the end of the famed Savile Row there’s a small men’s clothier called K’s. Although it claims to specialize in men’s bespoke clothing (as every men’s clothier on the famed Savile Row does), those in the know know K’s true specialization to be things made of silk. They know, too, of the proprietor’s prominent role in the black-market silkworm trade. But they don’t care. People much more important than you visit K’s from far away places.
K used to have an apprentice: a former leftist intellectual who turned his back on a career in “the academy” because of a profound distaste for its increasing corporatization and residual and unwarranted snobbiness. And because he was totally into fashion. Rumors suggest that K’s apprentice fell in love with a woman who worked someplace nearby, a former cocaine addict who was not very pretty but nevertheless attractive for indiscernible reasons.
Some say K was jealous of the couple. They also say that he fed them to his silkworms and that he subsequently offered an exclusive collection of extra fine silk handkerchiefs called “LoveLost.” An edgy enough name for a collection of handkerchiefs, but they weren’t worth what they cost.
Leave a comment | tags: affect, capitalism, fashion, handkerchief, intellectual, love, Savile Row, silk, silkworm | posted in Man, Short Fiction
